Archer decides to investigate a Class 9 gas giant, only to find a battered scout ship sinking deeper and deeper into the atmosphere, at risk of being pulverized by the ever increasing atmospheric pressure on its hull. The Captain decides to send a shuttle pod to see if the ship and its crew can be saved, despite the significant danger such a mission would pose for the Star Fleet away team.
Sato approaches Archer to ask if she can be part of the away team, proudly telling him she has finally found her "sea legs" and has overcome her fears. T'Pol leads the team, made up of Reid and Sato, into the atmosphere. They board the ship and discover that it is a Klingon scout ship with a crew that is dying of some unknown toxin. Further, they calculate they have at most an hour available to get the ship running again before their own shuttle will be crushed by the atmosphere and their own opportunity of escape will be lost for good.
T'Pol advises that they should leave immediately. Klingons, she quite rightly says, do not want help and would prefer to die at their posts than accept aid from Humans. Further, she warns, if any of the Klingons were to wake up and find the Star Fleet folk on their ship, the Klingons would definitely try to kill them as hostile raiders rather than interpret their presence in a more positive light.
Needless to say, T'Pol, despite the fact that she is in charge of the away mission, is somehow over-ruled and the away team remains, trying to figure out how to repair the Klingon ship.
T'Pol's warnings prove accurate: a Klingon officer, who has hidden herself in the ship's freezer to slow the debilitating effect of the toxin she has ingested, attacks Reid, then steals their shuttle pod and flees the atmosphere in it, stranding the away team on the rapidly sinking Klingon ship.
Enterprise spots the fleeing shuttle and captures it, leading to an interesting battle between Archer and the Klingon officer -- Archer wants her to help repair the Klingon ship in order to save the away team (and the Klingon crew); the Klingon officer views Archer with suspicion, blaming him and Enterprise for the poisoning of her crew.
The Klingon raptor sinks further and we are approaching crunch time. Reid, who has been suffering from a cold through the episode, starts to become dehydrated so both T'Pol and Sato head to the Klingon kitchen to find some water for him. Confronted with the Klingon larder (which features goch (sp), live targs, and various other grotesque edibles), Sato suffers a panic attack. T'Pol then leads her through a mindfullness exercise that helps her grow calm and the two return to help Reid again.
Incapable of repairing the engines, the away team devises a clever scheme to use Klingon photon torpedoes to create shock waves to push the raptor higher and higher in the atmosphere. It would appear to be a big deal to Enterprise's creative team that they have Sato the one who continues to recommend riskier and riskier strategies but I'm not sure why.
Meanwhile, Phlox has developed an anti-dote to the toxin in the Klingon systems, Tucker has managed to reinforce the second shuttle pod to be able to withstand higher external atmospheric pressures and Archer has used Klingon psychology (learned from the Vulcan data base) to convince the Klingon officer to help (Death before dishonour, and all that). So Archer and the Klingon officer head out to join the raptor as the raptor bobs upwards in the atmosphere, riding the shock waves of explosions caused by the detonation of the raptor's photon torpedoes.
All seems well. The Klingon officer confirms that she can repair the ship, given the time the away team has bought her, and revive the crew with the anti-toxin. Archer brings the away team back to Enterprise.
For some reason, T'Pol, Reid and Sato need to strip down and sit in decon for a while (decon is now treated as something of a spa session) but Archer, who also boarded the Klingon ship, does not.
The raptor, fully repaired and with its crew alive and well, emerges from the gas giant's atmosphere and threatens to attack Enterprise. Archer, the irony of the situation not lost on him, tells the revived Klingon captain that, considering the structural damage the raptor has taken and the fact that all of its photon torpedoes have been spent, Enterprise would blow it to pieces if the Klingons fire a single shot.
This Klingon captain apparently prefers dishonour before death because, with a grunt of frustration, he goes to warp and flees.
I have given a lot of thought to this episode and I still can't figure out how I feel about it. It's kind of a "yes, but..." episode.
You could say that "Sleeping Dogs" is laudable because it features three strong women in central roles: T'Pol, Sato and the Klingon officer.
Yes, but the strength of these women is almost deliberately undermined to the point where you wonder if some cynicism isn't at play here: put women front and centre, then sexualise them and show them to be unworthy:
- T'Pol commands the away team but, once again, her advice is ignored, her proposed course of action (leave immediately) is undermined and she stands idly by while the two other characters devise and implement the solution;
- Sato's strength is undermined by the early reinforcement of her fears, the swelling strings that accompany Archer's decision to permit her to go on the away team (the music at that point is so cheesy it sounds like it was taken from the soundtrack of a bad romantic comedy, her panic attack aboard the Klingon ship, and the fact that T'Pol has to take two or three minutes during a critical moment of the plot to calm her;
- Both T'Pol and Sato (and, the be fair, Reid) end up in skin tight cat suits while still aboard the Klingon ship (apparently, they wear their long underwear under the atmospheric suits);
- the Klingon officer flees her ship rather than attacking the away team in an attempt to permit her fellow crew members to die honourably, permits herself to be captured, then agrees to work with the weakling humans, only to disappear at the end when the males among the revived Klingon crew re-assert their dominance; and
- T'Pol, Sato (and, to be fair, Reid) end up half naked in the decon chamber in an overlong scene in which the writer (director) devises a ridiculous development that then requires Jolene Blalock, who is of course wearing the smallest amount of clothing, to stand up, saunter across the scene, answer a comm message from Dr. Phlox, then saunter back to her original seat, all the while leaving Sato and Ried seated.
One could state that the episode involves a respectful effort by Archer to understand Klingons and that the Star Fleet away team (in fact the whole crew) risk their lives to save Klingons.
Yes, but from the title of the episode, to the snide comments made throughout the show, to the final dishonourable behaviour of the Klingon captain, the overall tone of the episode is distinctly racist toward the Klingons.
"Sleeping Dogs" is, obviously, a shortened form of the old adage, "Let sleeping dogs lie". And, in the context of the plot, the applicability of this adage to Archer's situation seems obvious.
But there is no escaping the fact that the title refers to the Klingons as "dogs". And the Klingons are not "sleeping", they are "dying". And the Klingon culture demands that they be permitted to die at their posts in order to retain some level of honour.
And then, when they first arrive on the Klingon ship, the Star Fleet away team make several jokes about the smell on the ship. And they gag and fuss over the Klingon stock of food.
And Archer, despite the fact that he makes a big deal about learning about Klingon culture, completely ignores it in his ongoing dealings with them.
To make matters worse, the Klingons themselves are written so as to undermine their own beliefs. For example, the Klingon officer completely abandons her race's warrior philosophy by accepting help and bringing Human help to her colleagues and her ship.
And the Klingon captain completely dishonours himself and his crew by backing down in the face of Archer's threats to blow the raptor back into the gas giant's atmosphere. Dishonoured as he was by permitting his crew to be poisoned by a weaker species and by accepting help from the weakling Humans, the Klingon captain should have used the opportunity to attack Enterprise and, if he can't emerge victorious, then at least to lead his crew to valiant, honourable deaths.
Archer denies them their honour. The writer denies them their honour. How respectful of Klingon culture is that?
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